


After the  Fall

by sobrecogimiento



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:20:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobrecogimiento/pseuds/sobrecogimiento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-apocalypse world, Castiel’s sent down there to watch I guess like Anna was. He’s got doubts and Sam takes advantage of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the  Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Real morbid, and poor Cassy really suffers in this. Also graphic S/C sex, wherein Sam is a toppy bitch. Mention of character death, but it’s no one anybody likes. I don’t think. There is not actual non-con in this, but there's a bit of dub-con.

There’s not much left after.

Most of what remains are skeletons, the leftovers of too many dead to be buried, left out to rot in the sun. Cities are stencils, bombed- and burned-out shells, rusty and fragile, left to the elements and the homeless ghosts. They wail with the wind through empty streets, out of the windows of vacant buildings that stare like eyes. Noise is reduced to silence, the whispers of the dead and the harsh murmurs of the few survivors, sneaking like fugitives through the woods and the remnants of was once civilisation, trying only to live. After, there is nothing left on the barren Earth worth watching over, but when he is ordered to watch over it anyway, Castiel accepts the assignment like he has accepted all the others, and keeps the undercurrent of perplexity to himself. He does not want to appear disobedient, remembers all to well the slaughter that followed Lucifer’s release, not so much of a war as a massacre on both sides.

If Uriel were still alive, he thinks, he would feel justified in the name he gave humanity. Now, they are again very close to mud monkeys, scavenging the wastes of lost societies and using the artefacts of the dead in their bitter struggle. Castiel remembers the death of that brother, his fatal mistake in underestimating the Winchester boy when he was the one to push him that last little bit over the edge. No one had known the true extent of his power, until he’d reduced one of heaven’s own to ash, Uriel, who had once threatened to do the same to him.

But in truth, it would not be fair to degrade the humans; they rose too far, only to be sunk again, by forces unfathomable, outside their control. In the end, they are still his father’s children, and Castiel will still love them, even if it earns him scorn. He will still watch over them, light brush of wings as they pass, to give them hope, comfort in a dead world. He admires them, and wonders how the others cannot. There are monsters they must fight against now, demons Lucifer never bothered to send back to hell. Most of the survivors were hunters, and now, their descendants; those who could see the signs, at least a hint of the impending deluge, knew to hole up until the worst was over, save what and who they could. Monsters are real now, no longer confined to stories and nightmares, and knowing this is a means of survival. So Castiel wonders how their efforts can seem useless to anyone, almost as much as he wonders about Lucifer himself. 

Castiel was created after the Fall, a replacement for the traitors, and so Lucifer was unknown to him, simply a name that meant the worst things, terror and death and the final, ultimate end. The real one surprised him, strikingly beautiful and seemingly backed into a corner by heaven’s forces, accused of unleashing the end of the world. In reply he’d thrown his head back and laughed, sly, silver grin and the white flashing of his teeth, eyes so dark they looked like an abyss.  _Now boys, don’t be silly,_  he’d said.  _That would just put us all out of business, hmm?_  The rock came to life around him, took the shape of animals twisted beyond recognition. Lucifer quirked a half-grin, continued, continued,  _I’m just letting my kids have a little fun. See, they haven’t been out in awhile._

And then he’d disappeared, back into the depths, took most of his horde with him, and Castiel wonders about that. He wonders about feeling things, about being a demon and being a human, about if he should be grateful he doesn’t have any of it, remembering the grief and rage in the boy king’s eyes when he claimed his birthright and knelt at the Devil’s feet.

It’s a relief, to think about it, to not have to constantly censor himself. Because Castiel doesn’t know what’s right anymore, doesn’t know why he continued to follow orders besides that he isn’t sure he’s  _capable_  of doing anything else. Doesn’t know why he kept playing the good soldier right through the one thing he’s almost sure wasn’t right. It’s a relief to think and not have to worry about who might be listening, who might report him and cause him to be forcibly parted from what and who he is. Castiel keeps his post, allows himself the luxury of thinking because no one will hear.

But Sam Winchester does.

And that’s how he finds him.

*  
The boy king only comes like a thief in the night, difficult for any above to see him, prudent enough to know better than to start a war over something as stupid as a border dispute. He is the only one who has ever kept Castiel company, ever made him feel lonely. His presence created a tear in the world that he stuffed himself into, and it remained raw and empty when he left.

“How’s my brother?” he demands the first time, growls words like an avalanche in the winter. 

Castiel looks at him, passive, doesn’t know how someone can manage to not buckle under the weight of all that pain. “You have no brother,” he says. This is true.

This is true, but it is not the truth Sam wants to hear. He lets out a feral cry, blatantly abuses his powers and beats him to a sodden, bloody mess before retreating into the dark. Castiel waits for the sun to heal him. 

A few weeks later he comes again, slinking close like a cat, within pouncing distance before the angel even notices. “Dean,” he says. “Where is he?”

“Heaven,” Castiel tells him, but it is nothing he didn’t know.

Sam is not a boy anymore, he thinks. He is a full-blooded demon, smarter than a human and as dangerous as a wild animal in pain. “How is he?” he asks. “What’s he like now?”

The answers to this evade him. He is not human enough. “He is at peace,” Castiel says finally, a response already handed to him pre-made, a thousand times before. 

“Does he still know me?” Sam whispers, heavy and thick with devastation. “Does he know who he is? Does he remember me at all?”

“He prays for you,” Castiel says, because it is the truth. He has heard Dean pray for the demon that was his brother.

Sam chokes out a laugh that is more a sob. It is an ugly sound, grows and reverberates off the dead cities, the dead world. “It’s too fucking late for that.”

“You . . . you miss him?” the angel asks. The words are foreign on his tongue. 

“Yes.” He speaks through clenched teeth.

He fights the next question, only to have it slip out against his will. “You love him?”

“Yes.” Sam is crying, bitter tears of sulphur and brimstone. 

Castiel looks at him, measures carefully. “I do not understand,” he says. 

“You don’t fucking  _want_  to!” Sam yells, rounds on him suddenly. “You be grateful you’re numb, you stupid sunuvabitch, or else I’ll fucking take that from you and show you what it’s like!”

“You can do that?” he says, wonderingly. It’s the wrong response.

Sam circles in, gets too close, their toes touching and his face inches away. “You tempt me,” he snarls. “Go ahead and try, motherfucker, swear to God I’ll do it.”

“What does it feel like?” he asks, curiosity all-consuming and taking over his better judgement, the part that tells him to get away. 

“You want to know?” Sam demands, face in shadow and a sneer in his voice. “You really want to fucking know?”

What they did to Dean—what he  _helped_  them do to Dean—might be the worst of things, one of the parts of heaven that seems like hell. And Castiel wants to know what that means, to take someone’s humanity away, wants to feel guilty for it. That’s what has him standing his ground, looking up at Sam Winchester and stuttering a “Yes”, feeling the night descend on him like a predator as Sam grins and takes what’s being offered to him.

He seals it with a kiss, leans in and fits their mouth together, hand firmly behind Castiel’s head, holding him in place, tongue hot and intrusive and searing his mouth as the world cracks and fragments and realigns and something inside him  _breaks._  If he could get air, he would be screaming in pain, but Sam’s mouth suffocates him, makes it impossible. He clings to him weakly like a rock at sea, a handhold in a world gone to pieces. 

And then Sam’s pulling away, smiling like he’s won a prize, hunger and victory and satisfaction. The lonely and desperate can only take pleasure in destruction, for the simple reason that misery loves company. Castiel understands this now and wishes he didn’t, wishes he never wanted to.

“I’ll see you later, Cass,” Sam whispers, butterfly-touch of lips against his temple and disappears into the night, like a thief, like a cat, like a demon. 

There is a tear in the world, raw and empty, and Castiel feels it throbbing in him, echoing with his heartbeat. It crashes on him now, the wrongness of what he’s done, of what he’s always been, ripping through him, the emotions of millennia, all at once and too much to handle. And suddenly, he  _needs_  Sam there, needs Sam to make it better, and that terrifies him most of all, this desire for a boy-turned-demon that he’s been ordered to hate, as if he were Lucifer himself. As if he never stood there, hesitant and eager in a motel room when the world was still whole, shaking his hand with expectations Castiel wasn’t made to fulfil. 

He thinks of how Sam changed—of what they did because it was a foregone conclusion after they took away Dean—and he hates himself for it. He hates himself for what they did to him in the name of a destiny that was too horrible to belong rightfully to anybody. They took away his faith. They made him what he is now. 

It is too much, too hard a burden to bear, and Castiel seeks refuge in his wings, flight, only to find that they are too heavy to lift. With horror, he realises that he did that; he did this to himself, became vulnerable and helpless, and a streak of terror runs through him, fear that takes his breath away like a kick to the stomach.

He cannot fly, and so he does what he can, curls in on himself, and for the first time mourns, is sorry for everything that has happened. On the surface, Castiel tells himself that he is waiting for word from heaven, orders to go home and get out of this nightmare. But he knows it is hopeless, and when he is honest he waits for Sam.

*  
It takes him a century. 

The years pass cold and barren, a reflection of this world he inhabits, not his own but he has no other. The pain is not the kind that allows sanity; increasingly, Castiel feels himself slipping into the void of madness. None see him. None care for him. Heaven will not help him any longer, but he does not belong to hell. In the end, he waits for Sam, or he waits for the true end of the world, for rest. He waits for something to take away the frigid weight of ice on his chest. 

But when Sam does come, again by night, by the light of the stars under the new moon, Castiel backs away from him, terrified like a skittish animal, embarrassed but unable to help that gut-instinct. It has been too long since any noticed him, since he has received any attention, and even the briefest acknowledgement cuts through him like a blade.

Sam smiles blindingly, as if he knows his thoughts exactly, mapped them out and anticipated them before Castiel conceived them himself.

“Hey,” he says, face kind and the perfect illusion. “Hey, Cass, c’mere.”

“Can’t,” he responds automatically, shakes his head in fast, short jerks. “Can’t leave it.”

“It’s all right,” Sam says, lowers his voice to a reassuring murmur. “Night is Lucifer’s time. God won’t see you.”

It is a lie. It is a lie, and they both know it, but that isn’t the point. Sam wants to see if he will come anyway. 

Decades have worn away at him, cold and the elements and whatever has emptied him and rubbed him raw inside, and he has no strength left, no resistance. Trembling, haltingly, he steps down—leaves his post, disobeys—and walks into Sam’s open arms. He’s burning hot, like danger and hellfire and damnation, but it’s warmth and the best thing Castiel has felt in ages, and he clings to this demon like he never wants to let go. 

Fingers smooth his hair, Sam’s mouth warm and pressed against his forehead. “Tell me,” he says. “Tell me you accept this. Tell me you  _want_  this.”

“Why?” Castiel hates that the question is choked into Sam’s shoulder, where his face is buried. 

“Oh, Cass.” Sam’s laugh is almost scornful, some of his true nature showing through. “You’re the one who wanted to know.”

His muscles spasm, shudder. “I want—” He gasps. “I don’t want to feel like that anymore.”

“Come with me,” Sam says, an invitation rather than a command. If he said no, Sam would leave him here, and that’s what terrifies him into nodding, surrender. 

He follows Sam into the woods, allows himself to be stripped bare under the cover of trees, and it hurts entirely different, shame until Sam kisses him, tells him there’s no reason for it.

Sam is stronger than him now, could force this if he wanted to, but he doesn’t, doesn’t have to because Castiel lets him. Lets this demon run his hands over his body, dig into his soul in little, searching tendrils, shivers and arches into his touch because this is better than absolute nothing, because he has finally gone crazy. Lets Sam kiss him, deep and hot and wet and intimate, teach him _how_  to kiss because he’s never done this, never even thought of this before. It’s a shock to him that he can feel himself getting hard, that Sam’s hand on his cock sets off fireworks in his head, makes him desperate for more of something without knowing what.

He should stop, he knows, before Sam goes that final step and lays him flat on the ground. Nothing is worse than this; there is no redemption, and somewhere he is panicking. Somewhere, Castiel is still an angel of the Lord, but that part shrivels up inside him, almost dies completely when Sam slips his first two fingers in him, scissors them, twisting and stretching him open, when he realises he  _likes_  it. He’s kissing him when Sam pushes in, mouths interlocked so Sam swallows his gasp as he thrusts. 

“Does he remember this?” Sam hisses, holding his arms above his head and biting along his jaw. “Does he remember I love him? That he loves me?” He fucks deeper and harder, and Castiel cries out in pleasure and pain. “Does he know what that  _means?”_  

“We gave him Grace,” Castiel says, clinging to the pain only because it’s better than oblivion. 

“You took it away,” Sam growls, kissing him again, harsh and vicious, teeth in his lower lip.

He comes in a sudden burst, orgasm a shock, cries out in surprise as much as pleasure. It’s different than the light he once had, low and dirty and intense, and in horrible way infinitely better. Sam lets out a litany of meaningless curses, throws his head back and comes inside him, pulls out roughly while Castiel is still too limp to wince at the drag.

The world is dead and empty, spinning around him. “Thank you,” he whispers, sprawled out and boneless on the ground. 

Sam laughs, cold and unnerving. “Try your wings.”

Obligingly, Castiel tries to move, only to have his vision immediately white-out with pain. He screams, a high, unnatural sound that he can’t stop, because his wings are broken, in pieces and shards. Sam stand over him, impersonal, watches him writhe like a bug under a magnifying glass before reaching down and brushing away the shattered remnants, and Castiel almost sobs in relief when the pain disappears.

Exhaustion threatens to overtake him, the result of feeling so hurt and sated at once, and when Sam picks him up, he slumps against him, nothing else to do, all the fight in him and the strength he once had just gone. Castiel knows he no longer belongs to God, and he wishes he had enough energy to care.

“You don’t need those anymore,” Sam whispers, meaning the wings. “The power’s all inside you now.”

Castiel nods against his chest, completely defeated as Sam swings an arm under his knees and lifts him. He falls asleep to the sound of the demon’s heartbeat and the warmth of his skin.

*  
He wakes surrounded by fire and watchful, greedy eyes, shrieks of pain in the distance that set his hair on end. 

“Get out of here!” a voice snarls, and the eyes scatter in clouds of black smoke. 

A hand reaches down, grasps Castiel’s forearm and yanks him to his feet, where he stands reeling, too close to Sam and awake enough to be properly terrified.

“Am I—?” he starts, can’t bring himself to finish the question.

Sam grins, a hand on his neck, again deceptively gentle. “Yeah,” he confirms. “This is hell.” He kisses him, slow and confident like he has a right to, and Castiel realises with a shock that he probably does. 

“I own you now,” Sam murmurs in his ear, like he can hear his thoughts. “You’re mine, and the next time we go to war, you’ll be on my side. You’ll be my strongest, my best.” He licks a wet stripe up his neck. “Because I’m getting Dean back. And when I’ll do, I’ll make him remember what I am to him. What he is to me.”

“You’d go to war over him?” It seems incredibly shallow. 

Sam chuckles, low and throaty. “Look around,” he says. “Demons love war, Cass. They don’t need an excuse for bloodshed. So I’m sending you back,” he announces abruptly. “I’m giving you some fake wings and sticking you back on that post, and you’re going to break Dean out for me and bring him here. Understand?”

The last word is laced with power, and Castiel feels himself nod. 

“But meantime,” Sam continues, voice full of insidious intent, “there’s some people I owe favours. And almost all of them want to fuck you.” He slips his fingers between Castiel’s cheeks like a promise, rubs where he’s still sore and messy, and Castiel gasps, shocked at the effect it has on him, the way Sam takes advantage of weak spots he didn’t know he had. “You have such pretty blue eyes, Cass,” Sam whispers. “I should have known they were yours.”

He moves away, grinning like a serpent, and Castiel wants to grab his arm, keep him there, but knows instinctively that it’s not allowed. Sam is a demon, the one who tainted him and brought him here, but he is the only familiar face in hell, and if he leaves Castiel will feel like he is drowning in this pit of fire instead of barely keeping his head above water. It doesn’t matter that Sam is, or was, his enemy. 

Laughing, the boy king places his hands on Castiel’s hips like a brand, like a rancher would mark cattle, leans in and kisses him, burning his mouth. “Don’t worry. I need you, so they won’t leave any permanent damage.” He traces the angel’s ear with his tongue. “And yeah, they’ll hurt you a little, but I think you’ll probably like it.” The final squeeze he gives his hips grates his joints together, makes it a command.

He leaves him stranded in a circle of demons, hunger in their jewel-coloured eyes. They caress him with smoke-tendrils and whisper words of welcome, counting him as one of their own. 

*  
The next morning, Castiel is at his station when the order from heaven comes, demanding his return. He spreads his new wings and flies, surprised they didn’t see right through him, surprised he’s not dead. 

Bruised and bitten and marked by demons, Castiel returns to the place that used to be home and prepares to carry out his master’s orders. 

~End


End file.
